by Rhys Bowen
“It was all rather spontaneous,” I said. I was conscious of those interested faces watching us. “Please excuse me, ladies.” I went over to Daniel before there could be any kind of scene. I wasn’t sure if he’d be angry with me for leaving his mother, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “It’s good to see you, Daniel,” I said when we were safely in the conservatory. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” he said, looking down at me fondly. “I’m itching to show you the improvements I’ve made across the street. You haven’t seen them yet, have you?”
Now I was in a quandary. I didn’t want to tell an outright lie to him, but I realized that he would probably have wanted to do the grand unveiling himself. “I just peeked inside,” I said, “in case you were there.”
“And what did you think?”
“From what I saw it looked wonderful, Daniel. Like a brand spanking new house. So elegant. You’ve worked a miracle.”
He smiled and I saw the tension lines leave his face. “I’m rather satisfied with it myself. Shall I give you the grand tour now then?”
“Why not?” I beamed up at him. “I can’t wait.”
“What about your friends and the little gathering?”
“They can do without me for a while. I’d rather be with you,” I said. I poked my head back out of the door. “Daniel is going to give me a tour of his improvements across the street.” I gave Sid and Gus a long, knowing look. Luckily they were both quick on the uptake and said nothing.
I slipped my arm through Daniel’s as we emerged onto Patchin Place.
“It was good of those ladies to give you a nice little party,” he said. “Those women are presumably their friends. I don’t recognize any of them.”
I realized then that he thought that this small gathering was the party.
“Oh, no,” I said. “This is just some of Sid and Gus’s friends stopping by. I came down to help with the planning for the real event.”
“A fancy affair then, is it?”
“Who knows, with Sid and Gus.” I smiled at him. “You’re welcome to come, of course, but it will be with their more bohemian friends—ones we couldn’t invite to the wedding itself.”
He sighed. “I have no time for parties at the moment in any case. I’m on the job day and night.”
“A big case, is it?”
He nodded. “And one I’d rather not have taken on. But the order came from high up and I couldn’t refuse.”
“And I don’t suppose you can tell me any more about it?”
“You know I can’t, but it’s probably one of the most difficult things I’ve been asked to do. So forgive me if I haven’t been the most attentive bridegroom.”
“So what brought you here tonight?” I asked. “You haven’t taken to secretly visiting my friends, have you?”
He laughed. “Hardly. I wanted to know if there had been a delivery for the house today. I gave their address. It’s the last of the curtains.”
He fished for his key outside our front door, then opened it with a flourish. “I shouldn’t carry you over the threshold this time. It would be bad luck,” he said. “After you, ma’am.”
I was proud of my acting ability. I was suitably awed and excited by everything he showed me, especially the bed. “That’s some handsome bedroom we’ve got there, Daniel,” I said.
He slipped his arms around my waist. “Are you as impatient as I am to be making use of it?”
“You know I am.”
He kissed me. It felt wonderful, but as I melted into his arms I felt a shiver of guilt that I was deceiving him by taking on this case. Maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t succeeded completely. A couple can’t start off life together with deception.
“So how are the preparations progressing at my mother’s house?” he asked.
“She has everything under control,” I said. “The invitations have been sent, the menu for the wedding breakfast planned, and she is sewing my wedding dress as we speak.”
“Splendid. So you’re getting along well, are you?”
“She’s being kind,” I said diplomatically, “and very patient. My sewing skills are sadly lacking and she’s had to take over the brunt of the work.”
“She won’t mind that.” His arm was still around my waist as we came down the stairs together. “She needs something to keep her occupied. She still misses my father terribly. Maybe one day we can find a bigger house and she can join us.”
I tried not to let my alarm show. “One day,” I said. “I think it’s important to start our marriage on our own, don’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said.
“And we will go and visit her regularly,” I went on.
We reached the street. “So you’ll be going back to her later this week?”
“After the party,” I said. “I have to do a little shopping for my trousseau. My attempts at undergarments have turned out rather disastrously.”
He actually laughed at this. “I can imagine. How fortunate that we live in a big city, isn’t it?”
We came out onto the street. The dying twilight had streaked the western sky with pink and the houses stood as dark silhouettes.
“Take care of yourself, Daniel,” I said, slipping my hand into his.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“You know I do,” I said.
The door opposite opened at that moment and Sarah came out, accompanied by a tall, angular young man with light ash-blond hair. His face was fine-boned and his hollow cheeks made him look almost frail. However, I presumed this was a normal quality of aristocrats. In fact his face was so pale that in the semidarkness he looked like a ghost. Sarah smiled when she saw us.
“Oh, Molly, there you are. I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye to you. And now I can introduce you to my fiancé. Monty, this is my new friend, Molly Murphy. And Molly, this is my future bridegroom, Montague Warrington-Chase.”
“How do you do, sir.” I nodded politely. “And this is my future bridegroom, Captain Daniel Sullivan,” I said.
The men shook hands.
“Dashed annoying, this wedding business, isn’t it?” Monty said in drawling upper-class English tones. “I’m rather of the opinion that an elopement might have been the best idea.”
“Oh, Monty.” Sarah slapped his hand. “You know our families would have been furious if we’d deprived them of a proper wedding with all the relatives and all the trimmings.”
“Luckily our wedding will be a modest affair,” Daniel said, “and my mother is organizing most of it. I have the excuse of being stuck in New York on a case.”
“A case?” Monty’s voice sounded sharp. “You’re a lawyer, sir?”
“Daniel is a police captain,” I said.
Monty gave a brittle laugh. “Silly of me. When we were introduced, I assumed you were a sea captain. But then you don’t have the requisite beard, do you?” He tipped his hat to us. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I have to take Sarah home to change. We are expected at the Waldorf. I wish you all the best for your future—Miss Murphy, Captain Sullivan.”
We parted with additional pleasantries. Halfway down Patchin Place, Sarah looked back. “Come and visit me at work, Molly. I’d love to show you what we’ve accomplished.”
“I will,” I promised.
“Sarah, I thought I made it clear that I want you to stop working,” came Monty’s voice as they walked down the alley.
“Now does that sound familiar?” I looked up at Daniel with a grin. “Is that something that all bridegrooms say to their brides?”
“She works? Where does she work?” Daniel asked.
“She volunteers at a settlement house on Elizabeth Street.”
Daniel gave a snort. “Then I can understand why he wants her to stop. I would too. That’s a rough part of the city for such a delicate-looking little thing.”
“I know, that’s what I thought.”
Daniel continued to stare after them. “You know, I’ve
seen that English fellow somewhere before,” he said. “Somewhere I wouldn’t have expected.…”
“Where?”
He frowned, then shook his head. “Can’t remember. No matter. I expect it will come to me. I should be getting back to work. No peace for the wicked.”
“Oh, are you wicked? I didn’t know I was marrying a wicked man. What fun.”
He laughed and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Enjoy your party with your lady friends. I’ll be in touch.” Then he was gone.
Seven
The next morning I rose to the smell of fresh brewing coffee and came down to find that Gus had been to the French bakery on Greenwich Avenue and had returned with the morning papers, croissants, and brioches. If Sid hadn’t insisted on making Turkish coffee so thick that the spoon stood up in it, the breakfast would have been perfect. As it was, sitting with my friends amid the exotic plants of their conservatory, I thought eating fresh pastries and reading the paper a fine way to start the day. I scoured the papers to see if there was any hint of this big case that Daniel was working on, but there were only the usual petty crimes.
“So you’ll be going back to work for your Chinese gentleman, I take it, Molly?” Gus asked.
“I’ll have to go back and report to him, but when he hears that I’ve scoured the pawnshops and jewelers, I think he’ll have no further use of my services.”
“Maybe that’s for the best, now that you’ve seen Daniel’s face yesterday when he learned you were staying with us,” Sid said, tearing off a hunk of croissant and dipping it in her coffee.
“I know. That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “I’ve got to admit that my career as a lady detective is over and a life of domesticity looms ahead.”
“You make it sound like banishment to a penal colony.” Gus laughed.
“Not as long as the two of you are across the street,” I said. “I’ll enjoy having more time to spend with you.”
“So will we,” Sid said.
“By the way,” I said, remembering what had been forgotten in the fluster of the previous evening, “you’ll never guess who I ran into on the Lower East Side? Seamus and the children.”
“They’re back in New York? That should make you happy.”
“Indeed it does not,” I said, and related the full story.
“Panama—now that sounds like an adventure,” Sid said. “I’ve always wanted to cut a path through the jungle and meet anacondas and jaguars.”
“But not with a small boy in tow,” I said.
“They’re surely not taking the little girl with them?” Gus asked.
I shook my head. “They want me to find her a position in service—nanny’s helper or the like. Poor little thing. I think she’s far too young for that. I’d take her in myself only I don’t think Daniel would approve and it’s no way to start a marriage.”
“We’ll put on our thinking caps,” Sid said. “Maybe Gus knows a family who would like a companion to an only child. But I’m afraid the thinking will just have to wait until after the party. We still haven’t settled on our theme, have we?”
I left them heatedly discussing the theme for my party and made my way down to Mr. Frederick Lee’s office. He had an expectant, worried look on his face as he admitted me.
“Any luck, Miss Murphy? Did you find the missing item?”
“I don’t wish to be rude,” I said, “but I wasn’t sure your employer wished you to know the details of my assignment. You left the room while he spoke to me.”
Frederick Lee nodded solemnly. “I only understood it concerned something that was precious to him. Something that he wanted recovered as quickly as possible.”
“Then I’m afraid I have no good news for him yet, Mr. Lee. I have searched diligently in the immediate area with no success.”
He sighed. “My employer will not be pleased.” But he himself looked almost relieved. “Oh, well, we had better go and deliver the news to him.”
“I can go on looking,” I said. “I’ve only covered a fraction of the jewelers and pawnshops in New York City. But the thief could just as easily have gone across the bridge to Brooklyn or to any other outlying community. It’s like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“It certainly seems hopeless, but I’m sure my employer will not want you to abandon the quest.”
He took my elbow to steer me across the Bowery. At this hour it was full of women doing their morning shopping for the day’s meals while a gaggle of children clung to their skirts or raced ahead. The moment we turned into Mott Street the contrast was absolute. Here was silence and emptiness. There were no women and no children. We passed a couple of young Chinese men wearing the dark blue baggy jackets and pants that seemed to be the uniform of the Chinese. Their hands were tucked into their sleeves. They avoided my gaze and hurried by, heads down. I felt a stab of pity for them, living amid so much hostility and knowing that they would never have the chance to truly belong here, to get married and live normal lives.
The pity was short-lived, however, as Frederick Lee grabbed my elbow again and shoved me forward at a quicker pace. “Those men,” he whispered. “They are Hip Singers.”
“What kind of singers?” I looked back with interest.
“Don’t look at them,” he hissed. “Pretend they are invisible.”
“What’s the matter with them?” I too found myself whispering.
“Hip Sing is the rival tong,” he said. “Have you not heard about the tong wars? There has been terrible bloodshed between Hip Sing and On Leong, which is our tong. At the moment there is a truce, but it’s very fragile and the least little thing can set sparks flying again.”
“I see,” I said, realizing now why the man yesterday had looked up and down the street before he hurried away. “So are tongs like gangs?”
He looked shocked. “Oh, no, not at all. They are benevolent societies. They offer us protection and loans and even a place to stay. Like your American gentlemen’s clubs.”
“Our gentlemen’s clubs don’t often condone killing each other.”
“We have to defend the honor of our tong if the Hip Sing mob kills one of our own,” he said. “They are not to be trusted. We are a merchant’s association made up of civilized men; they are a bunch of rabble who work in the laundries and the cigar factories.”
He stopped talking as a door opened and two elderly men came out, each carrying a cage with a bird in it. They held the cages up as they walked solemnly down the street.
“What was that?” I asked.
“They are walking their birds. They do it every morning so that the caged birds get fresh air,” he said. “Just as you Americans walk your babies in their buggies.”
“You say ‘we Americans,’” I said to him. “Actually I’m Irish. I’ve only been here two years and I don’t think of myself as American yet. But you were born here. Don’t you think of yourself as American?”
“I would if I felt that I belonged here,” he said. “But as the child of a Chinese man, I can never become a citizen. So I will never truly belong.”
“Never become a citizen, even if you were born here?”
“That’s right. Thanks to the Exclusion Act. But I wouldn’t belong in China either. I am neither fish nor fowl.”
“That must be hard for you.”
He shrugged. “It is my fate. There’s not much I can do about it.”
We reached the storefront of the Golden Dragon Emporium. I noticed that it was next door to a building that proclaimed itself as the On Leong headquarters. So my employer must be heavily involved with the tong to have set up shop beside them. Again I waited until Frederick Lee informed me that we could go up to Lee Sing Tai’s apartment. It was a complete reenactment of the day before. Waiting until the boy admitted us. Waiting in front of the screen until we were told to enter and the man himself sitting as before, in the high-backed carved chair. The drapes were half drawn and shadows hovered in the far corners. I glanced back at that curtain from wh
ich someone had observed me yesterday. I wondered who that person had been and whether he was there again, but I decided it wouldn’t be wise to ask questions. Instead I stood in the doorway until my employer waved an elegant hand, directing me to sit on the bench and at the same time dismissing Frederick Lee from his presence.
“Miss Murphy,” he said, nodding civilly. “You will take tea with me?”
He clapped his hands and the tea tray appeared. He waited until the leaves had settled, then poured it with ceremony, handing me the cup with two hands. I noticed the length of his fingernails—they stuck out a good inch or so, like claws. Again the tea was too hot to drink immediately, but I’d learned to be silent until I was spoken to.
“Is it a fine day outside?” Lee Sing Tai asked at last.
“Very fine.”
“Not too hot?”
“Not as yet.”
“That is good. I may venture forth. My songbird needs more fresh air than he receives on the balcony.”
He lifted his teacup to his lips and took a sip. I followed suit, almost bursting with impatience to get this interview over. There was a strange feeling of unreality and foreboding that hovered over me in the half-light of the room. At last he put down his teacup. “You had a successful day yesterday?” he asked.
“If you mean did I find your missing jade piece, the answer is no, I’m afraid,” I said. “I did my best, I can assure you. I visited every pawnshop, every jeweler within a mile or so of here. The pawnshop owners all told me that they never saw Chinese jewelry and they would have remembered if a Chinese person had come into their stores. The jewelers told me that jade was not worth much and they would only buy gold or silver.” I paused, taking a deep breath. “So I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you. I could go on looking further afield, of course. There are hundreds more pawnshops and jewelers in the rest of Manhattan, and hundreds more across the bridge in Brooklyn and up in the Bronx and on Staten Island—but I can’t see that it would be worth paying me for what would surely be several days’ work after which I could well come up empty.”
He sat there, staring across the room as if I didn’t exist. The silence was overpowering and I began to feel uneasy. If he came from a country where men were beheaded for not wearing their hair a certain way, was he about to punish me for my failure? I decided to take the initiative.
